A Torrent of Profanity

When I started reading the Wall Street Journal about the flood of profanity that has made its way into everyday business conversation my first thought was-- the Succession effect.

I am probably among the very few who found the HBO show, Succession, to be a tedious bore. It was poorly written and poorly acted. It felt more like an effort to defame a specific news organization than to provide anything like entertainment. Compared with the far superior SHO series, The Loudest Voice, Succession was a bust.

And yet, it has apparently been wildly popular, a cultural meme in its own right.

Anyway, after not very much time watching the show, one was struck to hear the torrent of obscenity flowing from the lips of the leading characters. It was jarring and dissonant, mostly because anyone who has had any personal contact with those who work for Rupert Murdoch would recognize immediately that that is not the way any of them talk. Thus, it feels like it was larded on in order to discredit a news organization that does not toe the party line.

Now, the Journal article does not blame it on the television show. It suggests, not unreasonably, that the pandemic has broken down the barrier between public and private spaces, thus inciting people to speak in their business transactions as they speak in their private interactions. 

This is not a consolation, because one wonders why people, of both the male and female varieties, feel compelled to curse all the time. It is really that cool to offend people.

Anyway, here is the Journal interpretation of the new “swearing storm:”

Pandemic stress, the melding of personal and professional spheres, and an exhausted slide toward casualness are making many of us swear more. It is “a perfect swearing storm,” says Michael Adams, a linguist at Indiana University Bloomington.

Of course, we have data on the phenomenon:

Mentions of f—, shit and asshole, or related variations, rose 41% from full-year 2019 to 2021 through the end of November on Facebook and 27% on Twitter, according to Storyful, a news and intelligence agency. Storyful is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal.

Denver-based Inversoft Inc.’s CleanSpeak profanity-filtering software, which is used by companies that host online communities and other discussion forums, says the volume of filtered words has more than tripled in the past 18 months.

“People are becoming more aggressive in their use of profane and sexually explicit terms,” says Inversoft’s Chief Executive Don Bergal.

Indeed, profanity is more aggressive and hostile. The more we use it the more people will be impolite and rude. This does not facilitate cooperation. It does not produce social harmony.

Why is this happening?

Tracy Brady, a communications executive in Boston who has found herself swearing more during the pandemic, likens the relaxing of language to a parallel relaxation of how we dress now.

Cursing “is the yoga pants and Uggs of language,” says Ms. Brady.

During a recent work call from home, Ms. Brady overheard her two teenage sons squabbling in the kitchen about a takeout order. The 13-year-old accused the 14-year-old of having forgotten a condiment on purpose. “What the f—,” said one. “You’re such a f—ing asshole,” said the other.

Of course, one must mention that once a certain speech pattern becomes normalized people feel obliged to use it, the better to show that they belong to the group.

This does not make it any less offensive, a point worth underscoring at a time when people are so easily triggered and so easily sent into paroxysms of anguish when exposed to any mildly offensive sexist or racist term.

The Journal offers a slight caveat:

Some career experts say that cursing still is questionable in work settings. Executive speech coach Diane DiResta cautions against using profanity at the office. “It’s too risky,” she says, partly because what sounds acceptable to one person’s ears may be offensive to someone else, and it is sometimes hard to toe that line.

And yet:

In Toronto, Mr. Rosenthal sits on a couple of boards, and says he is no longer censoring his language during board conversations. “It is more expressive sometimes. And it’s how people genuinely talk to each other.”

Amy Platt, head of school for the Paul Penna Downtown Jewish Day School, witnessed the moment Mr. Rosenthal uttered the swear word in front of the other board members. She says she wasn’t put off. Touring the building “was a deeply exciting and emotional moment,” she says.

Apparently, communicating online facilitates the use of obscenity:

Roxana Lissa, a managing director for an advertising agency in Los Angeles, says she and her colleagues are communicating in a faster and more relaxed way over Microsoft Teams while working from home during the pandemic. The quicker, more casual tone means more swearing in some cases, she says.

By her own count, she has typed the word “shit” more than 50 times to colleagues in messages over the last eight months on Teams, she says. (Over email, she says, where her notes are more thoughtfully composed, she exhibits restraint.)

On Nov. 9, she wrote to colleague Jonathan Hastings, a director of business development, about a new business pitch: “I need help putting this shit together.” He agreed and suggested that two other colleagues pitch in.

Mr. Hastings says he wasn’t offended. “If I’m being honest, I probably didn’t even notice,” he says. Now that colleagues are meeting from their kitchens or dens rather than a conference room or an office, an “office filter has been taken down,” he says.

And yet, where does one draw the line. One can easily think of a few derogatory expletives, like the famous c--- word, that are still largely disparaged in polite conversation.

And yet, apparently, our woke multitudes have now found a new way to discard polite conversation altogether. I am confident that Miss Manners would not approve. Neither would I, for what it’s worth.